DSA Roadmap report presented at IADC workshop

The Drilling Systems Automation Roadmap (DSA Roadmap) underwent its first full industry review in a workshop held 17-18 January in Houston. The DSA Roadmap began in 2013 as a volunteer-led initiative to develop a roadmap report that would lay out expected automation development in drilling through 2025. Since then, the initiative has grown to include a steering committee of 16 experts in a range of disciplines, including robotics, rig design and sensors. The IADC Drilling Engineer’s Committee endorsed the funding of a JIP in 2015 to accelerate the release of the roadmap report.

The report is now complete and was shared with JIP members through the IADC DSA Workshop. The workshop gave JIP members an opportunity to provide feedback on the report before its general release, which is slated for later this year.

In this video from the workshop on 18 January, John de Wardt, the Program Manager for the DSA Roadmap and President of De Wardt and Co, explained the process that was used to create the roadmap, and how the advances in automation that have taken place since the work began on the roadmap have ultimately influenced the final product. Further, he discusses industry standards that would need to be developed to guide the development of automated drilling systems.